I started my professional career as a patrolman with the Bristol Tennessee Police Department in July 1989. I worked my last semester as a patrolman and graduated in December 1989 from King College (now King University). During the summer of 1991, I left the BTPD and started taking accounting classes at ETSU, attending classes from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM each day for 8 weeks. Once classes were over, I began working as an accountant at Jay Construction Company in Abingdon, Virginia. After a year or so, I was promoted to Manager of Accounting and Data Systems upon the departure of my immediate boss, who went to jail for investment fraud and embezzlement.

After leaving Jay Construction in 1993, I worked as a Staff Accountant in a CPA firm for the next two years. I had previously interned with this firm while attending a college located in Bristol, Tennessee. When the CPA firm closed its doors and moved to Nashville, I found myself headed to the Virginia State Police Academy as a Trooper in September 1996.

I spent the next two years patrolling Appomattox and Prince Edward Counties in Central Virginia just east of Lynchburg. In 1998, I was promoted to Special Agent Accountant, and for the next three years, I investigated financial crimes all over Central Virginia.

In August 2001, at 34 years old, I reported to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Brunswick, Georgia. Upon graduation in February 2002, I was assigned to the IRS-CI office in the Bristol Virginia Post of Duty investigating money laundering, tax fraud, public corruption, and other financial crimes. I was promoted in June 2021 and became the Supervisory Special Agent for IRS-CI in Roanoke, Virginia, where I supervised and led six agents before retiring in April 2022. I am employed by the United States Department of Justice US Attorney’s Office as a Financial Investigator.

I have taught online classes at Southwest Virginia Community College, Virginia Western Community College, and Cumberland University.

I have a master’s in justice administration from The University of The Cumberlands and an MBA. I am a doctoral candidate in leadership with a concentration in justice administration. My graduate degrees have allowed me the opportunity to teach at the collegiate level and prepare the next generation of patrolmen/women, correction and probation officers, and investigators in the most rewarding and honorable profession I know – law enforcement.